


Travel

by winterysomnium



Series: Zombie apocalypse AU [1]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M, zombie apocalypse AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 00:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3467390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why do you trust me?” he asks, and the stranger shrugs. Because you value the dead. he doesn’t say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Travel

**Author's Note:**

> I have gotten inspiration to write a piece that would be a bit more melancholic, I guess, and this is what I wrote. This might become a series, I do have a few vague ideas for next chapters, depends on inspiration, I think? Also if you would have any ideas feel free to send them to me. Hope you will enjoy.

Tim presses his palms to the floor, smushes his cheekto the wooden creaks and feels dirt and sand print a tattered map on his skin,in dents and glued presence; he closes one of his eyes.

A shadow chatters over the boards behind the door, another crawls across the room, in breathy, heavy steps, wispy feet in ragged socks, wiping away dry, brown blood, gathering splinters into the thinning wool, from corner to corner to window, from steps to stand still to steps.

Two citizens, with watches on their wrists and terror in their bones, gathering scents and echoes, older, _younger_ than they should be, without a change. They died a long time ago, died without their shoes on, their hands cracked raw from the colder, wet air of riversides, fresh sips gushing through forgotten leaks of glass, singing of storms and Tim’s thoughts ache for their hunger, ache for their humanity, astray, lost to their minds.

Were they trapped here, since last year’s summer? Were they first wavers, locked away to wander in the shallow room, hunting their shadows?

Or did they survive to get ambushed and left behind, did they beg to be shot, to be left, to simply _be_ until a stranger would let them out, until someone opened the door and luck decided the fight, for them or against?

Tim swallows a tired sigh.

Whichever it was, Tim is the stranger now.

(He’s the one to open the door.)

He sets a trap before he stands up again, sends the small, chattery ball through the gap, loud enough to catch their drifting attention, quiet to the outside, he reads their shadows and prepares his arms, quietly opens the door, slips through their sound and calculates the execution, throws one knife to the center of the first person’s skull and they trap the other under their rotting weight, clumsily and the other rasps, howls in gurgly screeches and Tim swiftly reuses the knife, stops everything they’ve been, everything they were and won’t be, anymore.

Kneeling in front of them he looks away, wipes the knife and quickly fills his bag with the cans and bag of cereal he has spotted from under the door, finds an unopened water bottle and a soda can, says: “I’m sorry for this.” quietly, as he loots the bags they left on the table, ready for travel, for running from this town.

They died early. They died when less people survived, when more people had hope, when places weren’t as quiet as they are now. (Tim leaves their phones there.)

It’s when he’s moving their corpses, covering their faces with fabric, taking out his pen to write “should be safe, looted, left three cans and a bottle of water” on the outside of the door when he realizes he’s been — too distracted.

He’s been caught up in useless thoughts and now he’s being _ambushed_ , by the living.

(By the smart.)

He raises his hands, palms up and the guy pulls the safety down with his thumb, looks around the bare, dusty room, over the horizon of the door, nods to the dead.

“Did you know them?” he asks and Tim’s eyes follow the direction minutely, then slip back to the stranger’s face, to the gun pointed at the center of his head.

“No,” he answers, tries not to place his weight to different bones, tries not to listen to the movement on the street, whistling across his shoulder, across the back of his ears.

“Why do all that then? Are you some kind of a fucked up weirdo?” the guy asks, his hold of the gun steady, not unsure in the slightest and Tim’s heartbeat resists the tense calm of his muscles, the muffled panic of his thoughts.

“I killed them. The least I can do is giving them some closure,” he says and the guy snorts, quietly, barely a gust of a breath, louder in the echo of Tim’s situation, in the echo of his straining arms. (Palms up.)

“Give _closure_. To whom? Them or to _yourself_?” he asks and —

Tim doesn’t really have an answer for that. (Doesn’t know if he _wants_ to have an answer, at all. Doesn’t know if he wants to know.)

And it’s now he recognizes that there’s a silencer, too, protecting the intentions of the gun, it’s now he recognizes the stranger as smarter, better than he thought at first. It’s now he recognizes he has lost.

He gathers his scattered calm.

“Look. I’m clearly outgunned here. Either shoot me and take my things, or take my things and let me go. It’s nearly night and I have _no_ shelter and _no_ energy, so I’d better start looking, real soon. I might be dead without any food or tools tomorrow anyway,” Tim says, slinks his bag’s strap from his shoulder, ash and dirt scatter away, float in quick, immediate currents around the slouch of his backpack, fall barely meters away.

The stranger narrows his eyes, watches as Tim slowly lets go of the strap, as he faces him head on, his stance based on determination, based on resistance, on any attempt to survive.

He lowers his gun.

“Where’s the rest of you?” he asks and Tim stays defiant, stays (not) ready to die.

“This is all of me,” he answers. The guy keeps in motion, bends to reach Tim’s backpack and takes it, tosses it to Tim’s chest, Tim secures the weight in his arms, on instinct.

“No group?” the guy asks and looks through the bags on the table, Tim turns to study the horizon of his back, the guy’s gun gone, hidden in a holster on his thigh.

“Groups travel to survive,” Tim answers, carefully putting his backpack on, tightening the straps. “I survive to travel. I’m looking for someone.” He pauses, sighs; quiet. “What else is there to do, with the world turned to _this_.” he gestures, hints at the scene behind the glass, at the movement of the street.

“Who are you looking for?” the guy asks, takes a box of cigarettes out of a front pocket, checks if it’s unopened, Tim touches a frame of one of the windows, glances over the city, sluggish, noisy, in uneasy, unsettling sounds.

“My Dad,” he answers. “He was in another city when this happened. In another state. I’m halfway there.” He leans on the rusted window sill, watches the stranger light a smoke, watches him pick up a can. “Groups want to find safety, not to look for people who might not be ever found. I know that. But it’s —”

“It’s something to do. I get it.” he interrupts Tim, looks up at him when he puts the can into his own bag.

“I’ve found a safe spot, in the house next door. It’s only accessible by a ladder, all the way up on the third floor. You can stay the night, if you want to,” he offers, points to the hall and Tim uncertainly, slowly leans away from the window.

“Why do you trust me?” he asks, and the stranger shrugs.

_Because you value the dead._ he doesn’t say.

Instead, he offers his hand.

“My name is Jason. What’s yours?”


End file.
